Denethor
by Meg Thornton
Summary: A response to the "Denethor Poetry Challenge" on the Henneth Annun list.


***Challenge***  
  
There has been much talk of the value per word of Denethorisms. It's  
time for you all to put yer money where yer mouth is.  
  
Fortified not by drink (we do not have that excuse) but by a good  
dollop each of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food and Full Vermonty ice-cream,  
Andria and I this weekend rustled up a nice little challenge for you  
gifted and wonderful people: The Denethor Poetry Writing Challenge.  
  
Yes, you read that right. There is no doubt, in our fevered minds at  
least, that the Steward had a drawerful of stuff hidden away. No-one  
Must Ever Know. But we think these jewels should see the light of day,  
and we want you to supply them.  
  
They would, of course, be *ghastly* - except that technically they  
would be superb. Denethor would pretend he's writing for the technical  
challenge, and would admire forms that had strict rhyming and metrical  
schemes. They would also be very compact and involve word-play.  
  
We have a number of suggestions, but you can take this particular  
challenge wherever you would like. There is no need to supply them in  
Sindarin, or even in Quenya - which would of course be Denethor's  
code, sorry, language of choice.  
  
1. The haiku. The presence of this particular form in Gondor is  
something of a mystery, although the extended voyages of the  
Númenoreans might have brought this particularly attractive and  
compact form back to Gondor. "Haiku is a contemplative poetry that  
valorizes nature, color, season, contrasts and surprises. Usually it  
has 3 lines and 17 syllables distributed in 5, 7 and 5. It must  
register or indicate a moment, sensation, impression or drama of a  
specific fact of nature. It's almost like a photo of some specific  
moment of nature. More than inspiration, it needs meditation, effort  
and perception to compose a real haiku." The thinking man's verse.  
  
"White tower stands watch  
Yet falls the shadow, despite  
Our far-sightedness."  
  
2. The rubáiyát. The Haradric influence on Gondorian verse provided a  
particularly attractive form for the Steward - despite his misgivings  
about the impurity of a non-Númenorean form (there would be just a  
hint of decadence about writing these).  
  
These are quatrains, each complete in itself, and generally  
epigrammatic. The first, second, and fourth lines rhyme, and  
sometimes also the third. The pre-emininent practitioner of this form  
in Gondor was Sathros, who was born in Umbar under the reign of  
Taranon Falastur, and was the son of a Númenorean lord and a Haradrim  
lady. He had as his motto: 'Abridge, concentrate, distil' and his  
verse are filled with a sense of the transience of all things human,  
the pleasures of existence, and  
the resignation with which the stoics and the people of the South  
accepted good and evil as alike predestined.  
  
"But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays  
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;  
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays  
And one by one back in the Closet lays."  
  
3. The linnod. A form of word play, consisting, in its original form,  
of a single line of matching halves. Each half is made up of a  
trochee, a dactyl, and a trochee (dum dum, dee dum dum, dum dum; dum  
dum, dee dum dum, dum dum).  
  
The linnod, of course, developed its form in the South Kingdom,  
becoming an 'extended linnod' or 'linnod couplet', with the North  
Kingdom retaining the shorter, 'purer' form. Denethor would be more  
familiar with the linnod couplet, a rhyming pair of linnods. It would  
no doubt be particularly galling that Thorongil could probably  
extemporize the shorter and punchier form on demand.  
  
"Grief tears my soul in morning - harsh tares in soft fields of corn.  
Tears dull the growing of grief, rain the gold tiers of new dawn."  
  
"To she who seeks the free-soaring seabirds at night--I try."  
  
4. The love sonnet. Because you just know there's a bunch of these  
hidden away as well. You can pick your own form for this  
(http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sonnet.html), if you're  
brave enough to go there.  
  
Do your worst.  
  
Una and Andria, who were *not* drunk...  
  
...but *were* aided and abetted by Dwim  
  
***Response***  
Denethor  
  
Forever one step from greatness  
Logic ruling affections  
Until my heart is bound in chains  
So strong I cannot stretch out of them  
  
Loneliness is mastery, mastery is all  
Let the cries of the flesh and the heart  
Be silenced forever in the demands of duty  
Let pain be subsumed beneath it all  
  
The heart is a prison with walls of stone  
Trapped in this prison, as a fly in honey  
I watch while my captors tear themselves apart  
Attempting to reach me and free me  
  
Fire and darkness war in my vision.  
Contending with unseen enemy I fight through the night.  
Stability taken from me by dreams  
I am left with uncertainty by my side  
  
Now around me the darkness grows deeper  
Despair conquers, my heart is flames and frost  
Death comes to claim us all  
Yet I shall take uncertainty to the grave with me  
  
***  
This was inspired by the "Denethor Poetry Challenge" on the Henneth Annun mailing list. I wrote it while I was in the middle of a rather nasty depressive patch of my own. As a form of therapy as much as anything else, I decided to try channelling Denethor (I figured that what the hells, he's not likely to be much more depressed than I am, after all). The above is what came out of it. It's not metrically correct and it corresponds to no known poetic form anywhere, but I have a feeling that it's what Denethor would have liked to have been able to write.   
  
It also had the nice side effect of being able to vent one hell of a lot of my depression. Hmmmm... something to remember, methinks. 


End file.
